Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Window on Eurasia: Few Ethnic Russians Remain in North Caucasian Administrations

Paul
Goble

Staunton, December 3 – Russian flight
from the North Caucasus has long been a matter of concern for Russians, but a
new study confirms something that is likely to be even more threatening to
Moscow’s control of the region: the percentage of Russians in the power elites
of the republics there now even lower than their diminished percentages in the populations.

Not only does that set the stage for
more Russian flight, but it recalls a trend at the end of Soviet times when the
share of ethnic Russians and especially ethnic Russian officials in the
non-Russian union republics was falling, triggering a self-reinforcing pattern
that ultimately led to the disintegration of the USSR.

Mikhail Romanov,
a researcher at the Politex Agency for Social Technnologies, pointedly suggests
that the reasons Russia is “losing the North Caucasus” are that “practically no
ethnic Russians remain in the power elites” there and that Moscow prefers to “ignore”
this trend (expert.ru/expert/2013/48/pochemu-myi-teryaem-severnyij-kavkaz/).

In reporting on his research, which
was supported by the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropoloy and the
EAWARN monitoring program, Romanov notes that “the alpha and omega of Russian
nationality policy is today considered to be the establishment and the strengthening
of the [non-ethnic] Russian nation.”

But in reality, he suggests, the
basis for that “can only be [ethnic] Russian culture, the Russian language and
the genuinely [ethnic] Russian people as its bearer.” And Romanov pointedly
asks “What do a Nivkh and an Avar have in common except for Russianness?”
Consequently, if that is lost, so too is a great deal more.

The researcher notes that there have
been many apocalyptic predictions about the disappearance of the Russian
people. For Russia as a whole, these are almost always overstated, but in the
North Caucasus, it is already “an objective reality,” one that calls into
question not only “the creation of a [non-ethnic] Russian nation there” but
also the retention of the region within the Russian Federation.”

Russians have been leaving the North
Caucasus since the 1970s, with their share of the population declining in some
cases by ten percent (Adygeya) but in others by 95 percent (Chechnya). Many
blame this on the de-industrialization of the North Caucasus, but polls show
that the biggest reason is that Russians no longer feel personally secure
there.

Efforts in recent years to retain
ethnic Russians or to attract them back have failed, Romanov says. And they
will continue to do so if they are carried out as they are now: four out of
five ethnic Russian young people living there say they are ready to leave.Many of them certainly will.

A major reason for this, Romanov
suggests, is that “ethnic Russians in the region are in an obvious unequal
position relative to the titular population.”He gives as an eample the share of Russians in the administrative
elites: It is now “two to three times lower” than in the population of the
republics as a whole.

The only exceptions to this are
Daghestan where ethnic Russians form 4.5 percent of the elite but only 3.6
percent of the population and Ingushetia where they form 11 percent of the
elite but only 0.8 percent of the residents. Elsewhere, their shares in the
administration are much lower than in the population. In Chechnya, for example,
there are no Russians in the elites.

The absence of ethnic Russians is
especially striking at the most senior positions.None of the heads of republics, none of the
heads of government, and none of the mayors of the capital cities in the North
Caucasus is an ethnic Russian now, and only two of the seven speakers of the
parliament are ethnic Russians.

The departure of Russians from these
republics and their absence in the administrations affects not only the
Russians and the titular nationalities but also “the so-called Russian language
groups” like Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Ukrainians and so on.That is because “together with the Russians,
Russian culture and the Russian way of life are leaving as well.”

But nature abhors a vacuum, and this
gap is increasingly being filled by the process of Islamization, Romanov says.
Indeed, “to a certain degree, Chechnya and Ingushetia already today can be
called Islamic republics.”

Moscow officials are aware of this
problem, but they prefer to talk about it in general terms rather than focusing
on the North Caucasus lest they spark more tensions or raise expectations. But
their use of “euphemisms” to talk about this trend is extremely dangerous,
Romanov says.

In Soviet times, Moscow ensured both
the presence of Russians in this region and its own control by enforcing the
principle that the deputy of republic leaders would “always be an [ethnic]
Russian.”That system broke down in the
last years of the existence of the USSR, and its demise speeded the end of the
country.

If Moscow does not recognize that it
faces a similar challenge today within the Russian Federation, then “sooner or
later [it] will lose this region,” Romanov says. And it will “not because
Russian nationalists or foreign enemies want to dismember Russia.” Rather, the
North Caucasus will go its own way because it will be “a region which lives by
its own laws” and in which “there are simply no [ethnic] Russians left.”